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<title>Live Like That by Ofelia Araignée (Raphaela_Crowley)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25197742">Live Like That</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/Ofelia%20Araign%C3%A9e'>Ofelia Araignée (Raphaela_Crowley)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hemlock Grove</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fae &amp; Fairies, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Magic, Summer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:34:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>720</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25197742</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/Ofelia%20Araign%C3%A9e</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer before it all goes wrong, Peter catches a fairy in a jar for Christina as Nicolae once did for him. </p>
<p>She wants to keep it, of course, but nothing can live like that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Rumancek &amp; Christina Wendall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Live Like That</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A/N: One instance of strong language - because Peter Rumancek has such a potty mouth.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div>
  <p>
    <span class="u">Live Like That</span>
  </p>
</div><p>A <em>Hemlock Grove </em>Fanfiction</p>
<p>"Hey, d'you wanna see something?"</p>
<p>Christina Wendall had been fetching him another beer in the hopes that – if she made herself useful – Peter Rumancek might tell her something that made <em>sense</em>, instead of just privately laughing at her the way she often felt he was doing behind his wolfish smirk.</p>
<p>She looked up to see what this was all about.</p>
<p>Peter was holding a jar.</p>
<p>It was getting dark, but no one was scared of the dark in Hemlock Grove yet – this was the summer <em>before</em>, the summer before the deaths and the panic; Christina's <em>last</em> summer, though she didn't know it – so it only meant the hot, hazy purple twilight everyone associates with evening that time of year. And if Christina's grandparents were worried, if they mistrusted the Rumanceks, at least they knew she was coming home fed, clutching a notebook full of stories that would follow her into her dreams at night. Peter had so <em>many </em>stories, and he wasn't that much older than her. She wondered when she was going to get her own.</p>
<p>Anyway, because it was getting dark, she could see the light in the jar.</p>
<p>"That's a firefly," she said.</p>
<p>"No." Peter shook his head forgivingly. "Look closer, numbnuts."</p>
<p>She did, and at first she did not understand. Her mind did not register this gorgeous impossibility. It was one thing to say Peter was very probably a werewolf – what T.V. program <em>was</em> it she'd seen that swore anyone with an index finger and middle finger the same length was a werewolf? It was quite another to admit that, in that jar, there was a little girl no bigger than Peter Rumancek's thumbnail. The wings were like a dragonfly's.</p>
<p>"Ooh. She's <em>pretty</em>." What a dumb thing to say, she knew, but what else <em>to</em> say when faced with this? Well, there was<em> one</em> thing. "Where did you get her? <em>Find</em> her, I mean."</p>
<p>"Flying around the porch light – she was trying to sting me."</p>
<p>Christina's eyes widened. "Fairies sting?"</p>
<p>"Fairies are meaner than fucking hornets."</p>
<p>"Can I?" She held out her hands for the jar, and he let her take it.</p>
<p>Later, after she would ditch him on the advice of her best friends, Christina would miss Peter the most when she thought about this exact moment: his hands brushing against hers as he handed her the jar.</p>
<p>She gazed cross-eyed at the fairy, pressing her pale nose against the glass. "What do fairies eat?"</p>
<p>"Flies."</p>
<p>Her eyes straightened themselves. He was doing it again – he was laughing at her behind that I-know-everything smirk of his. "No, <em>really</em>."</p>
<p>"I'm serious, Hemingway – they eat flies – it's better than watching a tarantula go after crickets."</p>
<p>"Could we get some?"</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"Well..." She shook the jar, lightly.</p>
<p>"You can't keep her."</p>
<p>"Why not?"</p>
<p>"They don't last so long in captivity."</p>
<p>"How do you know?" she demanded, angry to mask her disappointment.</p>
<p>"Nicolae caught one for me once."</p>
<p>"What would happen if I <em>did</em> keep her?"</p>
<p>"You'd check on her one day and there wouldn't be anything but this tiny old woman at the bottom of the jar – wings fallen off."</p>
<p>"That's sad," Christina said, simply, as if <em>it</em> were but <em>she</em> wasn't, not particularly. "Couldn't you clap your hands or something?"</p>
<p>He scoffed. "Oh, <em>man</em>."</p>
<p>"Fairies are supposed to be magical."</p>
<p>"Death is magical, too, Hemingway."</p>
<p>"Why does she have to die?" she needed to know, growing a little breathless as the questions pushed their way past her teeth. "Why doesn't she last long in captivity?" Why, why, why?</p>
<p>The answer was simple, though she couldn't understand it, not yet. "Nothing can live like that."</p>
<p>She handed him back the jar, put her arms around him from the side, and hugged him goodbye. "It's getting late – I need to go home now."</p>
<p>Lazily, he watched her go. It was hardly an effing <em>event</em>. Because this was before. Before the vargulf, before school, before the last time she'd hug him like she'd just done – incurring the mockery of the sheriff's sneering twin daughters – before she'd be jealous and angry and everything else that would turn her into a monster, into a killer.</p>
<p>Peter was right, of course, about what he'd said.</p>
<p>It would turn out Christina couldn't live like that, either.</p>
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